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Episode 118 – Home Is Where The Vibranium Is

Once you’ve heard it, you can’t unhear it, it’s Infinity +1! Join Jason, Allison and Dustin Schellenberg as they share tales of BioWare and the longest games they’ve ever played before starting into the void over what their favourite dystopia is in the Question of the Week.

Then in the second segment, we dive back into the incredibly subtextual Black Panther with Dustin’s article, Black Panther Invites Us To Make Homes For Those Without. What does Black Panther say about the importance of home? What does home mean to you? How can I get a pair of Shuri’s panther blasters? Listen on and find out!

The music in the break is “GB Hauz” by Lazy Nerd 204 [used with permission]

From Captain Kirk to Commander Shepard, Jason's love for science fiction extends to the final frontier. When he's not geeking out, Jason can be found studying communications at Red River College in Winnipeg.

My favorite dystopian setting would have to be the Dragonlance post cataclysm. The time that the Dragonlance Chronicles is set in is called the Age of Mortals; the gods of Krynn are gone, the races are all left rebuilding their societies with many living an isolationist life style. I really like the idea of playing Fallout in a “medium” fantasy setting. (Magic and dragons and gods were once everywhere, now? Not so much, but can be again.)

Hank Harwell

It’s a toss-up between the board/role playing game Car Wars and the world of the Max Headroom TV series from the mid-1980’s. The game (produced by Steve Jackson Games) had one of the best, most detailed in-game universes anywhere, centering on the horrors of a grain blight, tactical nuclear strikes and the scarcity of petroleum fuels. This all leads to the rise of fortress towns, killer bike gangs, and blood sports. From that people began putting weapons on cars and autodueling is born. This is sort of like demolition derby with machine guns. There was also a comic miniseries from Vertigo that was like a Cannonball Run to get a special algae food source from one end of the country to the other, through the Badlands.

Max Headroom was the first cyberpunk TV series ever and dealt with the media saturation/addiction of people (off switches on TVs are illegal), elections are decided by network ratings, and the corporations pretty much own everything, including public education. Against the evils of this world stands one very popular crusading journalist, Edison Carter, who learns too much and is slated to be murdered because of what he knows. However, the network can’t afford to lose Carter, so they decide to dump his consciousness into a computer and create a virtual presenter. Carter survives and works to expose the network exec who ordered his death. The series dealt with AI and intrusive security, televangelism, viral videos, identity theft, virtual warfare, and government corruption. All this in the mid-1980s, so a lot of these stories were very prescient at the time.

Timasaurus

Blade Runner and Deus Ex would be pretty good…

Aidan Zeglinski

My favourite dystopia is, of course, the original trilogy of Star Wars in which the galaxy is controlled by the Galactic Empire. It counts!

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About Geekdom House

The nerd and geek community is often considered by society to be misfits and outcasts, those living on the fringes of society, and often a childhood stage to be left behind at adulthood. In reality geeks are the connoisseurs and fanatics of science fiction, fantasy, comics, anime, board games, video games, computers, and all the art and creativity that comes along with these things.

They are often the forward thinkers of our society, undeterred by what is perceived as impossible with full belief that it can be, it should be, and will be possible one day. We seek to be a holy sanctuary for these troubadours of society.